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Friday, September 7, 2012

When we moved house, I
found myself in a 25 minute commute to drop Bethany off at daycare
each morning and afternoon. Initially this meant I had a very cranky
baby. After about a month of her not learning to entertain herself,
or respond to singing etc from me, I resorted to giving her the
iPhone. She quickly decided YouTube was awesome and like to watch
'ABCD', which was what she called anyone singing the alphabet song.
However, 10 x 25 minutes of streaming YouTube videos a week was
eating quickly through my data package, plus she also started to call
random people from my phone.

So I decided to set up the
iPad properly with activities to keep her entertained on the road.
And hence began a quest for good toddler apps. After several months
of searching for and road-testing apps (by me and my 25mo), here are
some of my top picks.

All of these games have a
lot of replay value. They encourage interaction and creative
exploration. They are good value for money. They don't have any
advertising, in-app purchases, or tie-in merchandising. They are
stable and seem free of bugs, and my toddler loves them. These are
all general apps that I think would be liked by most toddlers of both
genders. (Note: These are independent reviews. I have not been approached to review these products and am not receiving anything in return for these reviews.)

You
know those wooden board puzzles for toddlers where there might be 6
or so objects and each one is a puzzle piece? Well, Tozzle is the iPad version. The puzzles are all simple, engaging pictures
in bright colours that are aimed at this age group. There are 42
puzzles including farm animals, fruit and vegetables, numbers,
letters, car parts, fairytale scenes etc. The animals make
appropriate noises, the letters are accompanied by the name of the
letters spoken aloud etc.

User
interface: The app is
really easy for Bethany to move from one puzzle to another. After
the first couple of times, she never got stuck and was able to exit a
puzzle she was sick of and choose one she liked. She never
accidentally ended up in a screen of text and there are no
advertising links. If she has a go at placing a puzzle piece a
couple of times unsuccessfully, then a little circle and arrow
appears to 'hint' where it should go. I found this gave her just the
right degree of help to understand how the game worked.

Exploratory
value: This is an app
where there is an objective – to complete a puzzle. A little song
plays and balloons come down when you are successful, so in that
sense it is a reward-oriented app with 'correct' answers. However,
what is really nice about this app is that after you create
the puzzle you can play around with the sounds all the items make.
Bethany keeps coming back to the puzzle where she builds a xylophone
so that she can play the xylophone.

Educational
value: This app is
primarily about learning to compare and match together similar
shapes, just like its real world counterparts. It also reinforces
basic vocabulary.

Toddler
appeal: Very high.
Bethany loves it and I know plenty of other mums who say their
toddlers love it too.

How
irritating? Not too
bad. The little congratulations tune is mildly annoying, but this is
short and over quickly, and not so irritating when I glance in the
rear vision mirror and see Bethany doing a little dance to it.

Don't
be fooled by the boring, serious name. This is a great interactive
app that is all about exploration, not flashcards at all.
Essentially, the app's main menus is all the letters of the alphabet
in cheerful colours. Tapping each letter takes the child to a screen
with an interactive object to play with that relates to that letter.
For example, Z is a zip that can be zipped up and down by sliding it
with the finger, and it randomly reveals different objects when it is
unzipped. E is an egg that can be cracked open by repeatedly tapping
it until the white and yolk falls out. B is a beach where the sun
can be pulled down to the horizon and the colours change to sunset
and cicadas start chirping, or pulled back up to show a balmy day.

User
interface: Superb. So
simple, so elegant, and so easy for even really young toddlers to
navigate successfully.

Exploratory
value: Excellent.
There is no winning or losing in this app, there is just
experimentation and interaction.

Educational
value: Deceptively
high. Because particular letters lead to particular toys,
recognising the letter shapes is important for getting to the toy you
are after, which reinforces those letter shapes with strong positive,
relevant associations. Nearly all the interactive activities within
those letters also teach something about the real world. The zip
works like a zip, the xylophone like a xylophone. On P, you water a
tree, which grows pears, which you pick and which then turn into a
pie.

Toddler
appeal: Really good,
although I'd say she definitely prefers some letters than others.
She keeps coming back to it and getting more out of it.

How
irritating? Mostly not irritating. The background music
is pleasantly low key. The only glitch is the xylophone for X, which
cues every note she hits, so if she taps a lot with all her fingers,
it keeps playing for a good minute or two after she's stopped.

Price:
$0.99

This
is another interactive alphabet app with a similar concept but a
different visual style. Whereas Interactive Alphabet has a simple, cartoony style designed to maximise focus on the
letters and the functions of the objects, Goodnight ABC has 26 screens of gorgeous animal art with a more complex range of
interactions. Each screen is set on a stage like a diorama. Some of
the ideas in it are even a bit edgy - like turning off the light
switch on X scene shows the x-ray skeletons of all the stuffed toys
in that scene. I think this is pretty cool and Bethany is fairly
indifferent, but I wonder whether some (particularly older) toddlers
might find these kind of interactions fascinating or creepy.

User
interface: Pretty good
once they learn where to tap on the menu screen to get started.

Exploratory
value: Very good.
Encourages looking closely at the scene and exploring minute details
within the scene.

Educational
value: I can't imagine
any child would learn the alphabet from this app, because the letters
don't stand out from the scene very noticeably. What I think this
app does well is what a beautifully illustrated picture story book
does well – it engages the child's visual imagination.

Toddler
appeal: Very good.
It took her a while to warm to it, but once she started to realise
how much she could interact with it, she got right into it. She was
particularly taken with the alligator snoring when it went to sleep.
She sends it to sleep then giggles and announces he's 'noring!'

This
is a beautifully designed app, which is essentially an adult game
that has been turned into a toddler toy. In the game you choose to
visit islands. Each island is a scene where you can interact with
various elements – most in which you have to find a way of feeding
(loveable) monsters, or putting fires out using a moveable water
hose.

User
interface: Gorgeous.
The main menu is an interactive visual scene with moveable islands
which serve as pictographs for the various games. Bethany can
navigate it easily

Exploratory
value: Quite good.
While there are ways to successfully complete each game, there is a
lot to explore and interact with along the way.

Educational
value: The app creates
scenes in which objects fall down with gravity, and water in
particular moves about the scene in realistic ways. The game has a
kind of real-world logic in the way fire has to be put out with
water, and objects moved by the water to get at other objects. It
also has imaginative flair with the quirky concept and the great
visual design.

Toddler
appeal: It took a bit
of coaching for her to understand how the game worked, but once she
did, she really enjoyed it. She likes to pretend to touch the fire
and tell me it's hot, and likes to feed the monsters.

How
irritating? Pretty inoffensive. The music is soft and
mellow and the sound effects are quite muted.

Squiggles! is an app with an interesting concept. It contains a range of
scenes, and objects are triggered to move by squiggling on them. So,
a screen of cars are presented and the if you draw smoke for the cars
then they zoom along the road when you press the 'go' button.
Squiggles can be drawn anywhere, colours can be chosen, and there are
also options to put stickers on the scene as well.

User
interface: Not too
bad. Bethany learned to use it after a few false starts. She used
to end up in the setting menu or a text screen fairly frequently at
the start, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore. It took her a
while to work out how to change scenes within the game.

Exploratory
value: Better in
theory than in practice. My daughter quickly learned that a quick
scribble on each object makes it move, and all she does is that
minimal scribble then hits the button to make the objects move. She
doesn't explore by drawing on the scenes. The game would be improved
by a greater range of interactive aspects to the scene, and for
encouragement to experiment with modifying the scenes in a variety of
ways.

Educational
value: The hand-eye
coordination of drawing is what this game primarily offers.

Toddler
appeal: Bethany
enjoys it. Although she tends not to play it for very long before
switching to something else, she frequently chooses this app and
gives it a go.

How
irritating? This one can get a bit annoying after a while.
The narrator's voice is overly cutesy and the sound effects are
quite loud. I was startled to hear the narrator prompting Bethany to 'give this little girl a beer' at one point, and then say 'now this old lady wants a beer!' Turns out it was 'beard' not 'beer'... which of course makes much more sense.